Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin. Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king’s council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she’ll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom.

Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilirating. But she’s bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her… but it’s the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.

Then one of the other contestants turns up dead… quickly followed by another.

Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.

Review:

An assassin, sent to a labor one year ago, is given the opportunity to win her freedom. To do so, she must be the king of Adarlan’s Champion for four years. However, she must compete against twenty-three other criminals; the penalty for losing is death (for her). She loves training with the Captain of the Guard, but she shares a love of reading with the Crown Prince. Just as the competition gets going, competitors start turning up dead. Can she solve the murders before she becomes a victim? As she investigates, she is pushed into a destiny that could be the death of her.

A lot of BookTubers recommend Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass (first in the Throne of Glass series) so I finally decided to pick it up. It’s a new favorite of mine. It’s one of those books that sucks you in. I stayed up late into the night and trying to find extra time to read this.

I didn’t expect to like the shifting POVs, but I found it helped the story line. Multiple characters developed. Of course, the protagonist had the largest development, but I liked seeing her male interests developing as well. While Dorian and Chaol are friends, Maas was able to keep them as completely separate entities. Kaltain’s was the most surprising POV to have, but her swift descent into insanity was excellent and shocking. I almost feel bad for her.

The imagery is beautiful. Every scene was vivid, especially for the magic scenes. The fight scenes were perfectly executed. For the speed some of the criminals are supposed to have, it is written at just the right speed too.

A theme in Throne of Glass is freedom. This is found in all aspects of the book. Nehemia and Celaena share the same view on freedom, while Dorian’s father is a tyrannical ruler. It is also evidenced in the competition when one of the competitors tried to run: he was killed.

On the subject of the cover, this is not the original cover from it’s first publication date. I personally believe the newer cover is better than the original:

Original Cover

This e-book was formatted beautifully. It gives you the page numbers. I saw no grammatical nor spelling errors.

I recommend this novel to all fans of fantasy and those who like a “bad-ass” female protagonist.